India is darling of global defense firms

NEW DELHI  Sailor-suited Russian models touted their nation's submarines. Indian officers posed for pictures atop foreign-made armor-plated vehicles. And working the room at New Delhi's aging exhibition center were French, British and American arms merchants from global defense giants, elbowing each other aside in the search for a deal at Defexpo India 2012, the country's biggest-ever weapons trade show. Fueled by superpower ambitions and rivalry with China but hampered by a creaky domestic defense industry, India is on a military buying spree that's made it the belle-of-the-global-military ball. India's long shopping list calls for $20 billion in fighter jets, $1.5 billion worth of refueling aircraft and billions of dollars in submarines, tanks and artillery, among other equipment, all part of an estimated $80 billion spending spree over the next five years. Pakistan onc...